Relativity
by abstraction
Summary: If he's honest, well, if he's realistic, he doesn't end up at a wedding once he's ripped back into the universe. Eleven visits Rose.


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He doesn't like that this life is rewinding. The impossible hourglass of his lives, grains of sand which begin to fall upwards, free of time and self-preservation. The thought of all that time, all those centuries of lives lived, of friends and foes, love and loss. He is used to living things out of order, the chaos of meeting someone you have already met, for the first and last time to be the same point, and he understands, more than anyone, that time is relative. His tape is being wound backwards and he steps from song to song, moment to moment, in a single bound—holds tight to Amy, sees the sutures ripping inside of Rory, delights in River and half-wonders if she knows he is outside of her atmosphere, looking in, if she has this written in her book, a page of impossibilities in cramped handwriting. He tells them it will be alright, whispers beside them that it was always going to come to this, and he was so happy, so, so happy, to have met them, to have shared these adventures.

He can feel himself being pulled toward these specific minutes, these days or hours or years, a ghost on the edge of the universe, watching his own life. "Is this what it's like for you all the time?" he asks River on a beach as she laughs at his past, her present. He watches all of them—him and Amy and River, about to meet their friendly angels for the first time. He's already warned Amy in his reversal, and still he feels himself being pulled, pulled to events from before, before, before. He walks forwards and backwards in the same moment and wonders if this is always the way he walks in his life. Forwards and backwards.

"What a life," he says quietly to himself. He is in the TARDIS now, and the lights glow around him, making the air shimmer in some mysterious way. He doesn't want to leave this room, doesn't want to leave his ship, wants to stay with her, commandeer her from himself. He'd understand. His other self, the same self which by now is making a promise to a small girl who only wants the crack in her wall to stop whispering to her in the night.

He can feel the pull again, knows that his past self will be entering the ship and then he will be _there_. He will be there, he will be on a shore, with her standing with him and without him in the same moment, past and present. Her hair will be in the wind and the salt will shock his lungs and he wants to see her, he does, he _does,_ but it hurts, it hurts so much. So, so much. He can feel himself slipping, senses that everything is about to change, as if there is some invisible chorus of strings rising with his hearts, a crescendo that swells in his ribcage—he's going to _see_ her, after all this time, and—no. No, he can't. He can't. There are threads tying him to her still, and he cuts them, to save himself. For a desperate second he thinks how silly it is to be afraid of seeing a girl. But she wasn't, isn't, just a girl, not really. She was more, she was—

_Rose_, he thinks.

He'll skip the rest.

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If he's honest, well, if he's realistic, he doesn't end up at a wedding once he's ripped back into the universe.

It's slow work, being stitched back into time the way he's lived it, and the universe is a very large place, well and truly, and it's strangely painful to be born into a life already lived. It's as if his nerves have caught fire, the joints in his bones sparking to life, and there's a small panicked second where he thinks he may not get all his hair back. It was such good hair, too.

He takes some days to himself, makes sure all the rooms are still there in his home, and gives the console a gentle rewiring. Part of the backup navigational gear goes up in flames, but the colors are bright, vibrant, a shine that surprises his new-old eyes. "Hm," he says to himself. "Sexy."

He puts out the fire before he goes up in flames himself.

And then, suddenly, he remembers— remembers that pull which forced his time to rewind, remembers the pull towards her, towards Rose, the in-held breath, the heavy weight as he waited to see her gold-framed face, and in that moment he cannot think of anything more he would like to do, and that is to see her. Just once, just this once, and remember her before he must go on, right the wrongs of these strings of worlds, find out who is whispering this question across the reaches of time, of dimensions and atoms, of who he really is. He's pushed all the buttons he needs before realizing it, and he presses down the lever. His ship whirs to life.

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He can see her from across the way, a laugh bursting from her throat, the toll of some inward bell in his chest responding to its chime. For a moment he feels uncomfortable in his own skin, seeing the way she effortlessly leans into his other self, that careless intimacy, and he is hyperaware of the prickling scratch of his shirt, the inward press of suspenders on his shoulders. In a sea of people he remains motionless, eyes fixated on her form, and in his mind his stare leaves a slow burning mark of her movements, a string which ties her to him in every way, which pulls on him when she begins to move too far from him.

The sun is bright and he breathes out slowly, sweat beginning to gather at his temples in opposition to the heat, so he makes his way into the shade of a nearby tree—a blossoming birch that lines the sidewalk. For a moment he tears his eyes from her (from _them_) and looks up through the new leaves budding on the branches, dots of green peppering the dark arches that cross the sky. So, so blue. And so bright. His eyes swell with tears in response, the sun too harsh despite his stubborn wish to pull the heavens into his head. He wants to imprint this moment in his mind, wants to feel the thin threads of memory-making spin themselves solid. He closes his eyes, but still sees the afterimage of those branches, white against blood-orange and then fading, fading, fading.

When he opens his eyes, he searches for her in the distance. They had gotten ice cream—it was a hot, mid-90s spring day in New York and she had teased him about his heavy coat, bumped her shoulder against his until he bribed her with some cones from a tinkling ice cream truck. He hadn't removed the coat, and he knows she probably didn't understand why, but looking at himself there in the distance, all tall angry lines, he recognizes the coat for what it was. An armor of sorts, a call to action. He leans against the slim trunk of the tree and watches as his old self smiles and passes her a cone, watches him watch her as she licks some of the melted treat from her fingers and giggles. In another five minutes from now he will say something insensitive and she'll smash the rest of his cone into his jumper, but he doesn't think about that right now.

The bark of the birch is soft against his arm and he stares as they walk away from him, cones in hand. She throws her head back and laughs, and his answering grin is manic, happy. There's a twinge in his chest, and the strings that are tied to her thin as they continue on in the distance. They unravel, drift away on a warm breeze. He can't see them anymore, but thinks of when it really happened, a double-memory burning in his mind's eye—then and now. Past and present. It was such a small moment, in their timeline, well before Jack, and Kyoto—even before the space station—but powerful in it's simplicity. How mundane, how delightfully boring, compared to saving a world, or meeting some forgotten Queen. But still, this moment, a bubble of happiness, a calm before the storm. He smiles and turns away.

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They're in Belgium. He's suited now— pinstripes, tie, and trainers —and she is fascinated by the cobblestone roads, the meticulous brick buildings, and he follows in her wake. He's watching them from a small bridge, and from what he can tell, she is completely ignoring him. He remembers: he was complaining. For a moment he stares down toward the water, and catches his eye on two swans lazily circling one another, feels a phantom pang in his chest as they glide across the water. He doesn't want to read into things as a metaphor—there are too many meanings for his long life, but still he understands the parallels. Ripples slowly pulse outward from their small movements and he watches as they go further and further from the swans until they are indistinguishable from the lapping current of the canal. He pushes himself from the stone of the bridge, straightens his bow tie for no reason at all.

His eyes turn back to them. They're still walking, close enough to be holding hands, and she's speaking to him in a quiet voice, him nodding in agreement of something. He casually follows them, staying close to the walls and the shade it provides. They pause in front of a small cathedral, and she gasps and asks him something he can't quite hear. But he remembers—oh, yes! The cathedral they hid in when it started pouring rain—but he's getting ahead of himself. He whispers something in her ear and she giggles, punches him lightly in the shoulder. She walks toward the door of the cathedral, her fingers trailing along the gate as she goes. He can hear himself call to her, "But Rose! There are _waffles_!"

She turns to him and laughs. "Is that really the only reason we came here, Doctor? Waffles?"

"Yes, well," he straightens his jacket as if affronted, "there's history here of course but—"

"But what, you loon?"

"But we can go to when they were _built! _We can meet the man, or, well I suppose_ man_ is a bit of an exaggeration here, you know, the fellow who drew up the plans, but Rose—"

The sky opens with a deafening roar and Rose shrieks in delight. She runs back to him and grabs his hand, pulls him toward the cathedral where they laughingly fumble with the enormous door handle before pushing it open and tumbling inside. He watches the door shut, and pauses for a full minute, remembering the echo of their voices in the pews, the sweet dark and the dim glow of the stained glass. He turns and walks back to the TARDIS in the rain.

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The doors slide open at his presence, but he doesn't move. The doors close.

He knows this is a bad idea. It's a really, really phenomenally _bad_ idea but that's what he's good at, sort of, right? The bonkers things which turn out to be all right in the end.

This is different though. The automatic doors slide open in front of him for the second time, but he actually sets foot in the store this go round. He takes a deep breath. _Henrik's._ He can see her already, between the spaces of some mannequins, folding shirts and putting them away. "Oh," he says in a low voice, "_really_ bad idea." But his legs have moved toward her of their own volition and suddenly he is speaking to her. He is _speaking_ to her.

"Hello!"

"Er, hello," she says uncertainly. Oh, bugger. Too bright of a greeting, she must think he's a serial killer or an alien or something. Well, points for deduction if she's thinking that, he guesses. He has to leave, needs to go before he ends up tearing this timeline—he can feel the currents of it in his skin and they're cautious. He must tread lightly. Or just leave. Yes, leaving would be good.

"I have clothes," he says, strangled.

"Right," she says. "I can see that. So what is it you're doing here then? Anything I can help you with?"

_No_, he thinks. "Yes," he says.

She looks at him expectantly, her hands resting on a shirt she's just folded and placed on a display table.

"Ties?"

"You want ties?" Her hands move towards her hips, as if her whole body has become a question.

"Well," he clears his throat, "Bow ties. You know, because... bow ties are cool." He reaches up to his nervously and straightens it.

She laughs. She _laughs_ and makes a motion for him to follow her. She leads him to the men's section, and there are ties laid out in straight lines, and on the shelf above it—

"Here you are," she says with a smile and a wave of her hand. "Bow ties."

"Ah! Yes, here they are. Well, ah, thank you—" He struggles with the rest.

"Rose," she says. She looks him in the eyes and smiles, smiles like he is everything there is in the world, in the universe, and that he will be okay. He will be okay. It's like a punch in the chest and he gasps in reverse, a whoosh of air leaving him and he remains still and unbreathing until she turns from him, smile still on her face, and he is released. He will be okay, and she will be okay, and if the universe has taught him anything, it's that not everything is an ending, not really.

He grabs a black bow tie, runs the length between his long fingers.

"I believe I've got a wedding to get to."

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End file.
